Defining Fantasy

[robinturner]

I'm still looking for a good article about defining fantasy literature. By "good", I mean "suitable for my students, who are first-year undergraduate non-native speakers. That means nothing by people who spell "theory" with a capital "T" and talk about "otherizing the discourse of post-colonial queerness" on the one hand, and nothing too colloquial on the other. I might even drop David Brin's wonderful "We Hobbits Are A Merry Folk" from the course because his chatty style throws a curve-ball at foreign students, in the way that "throws a curve-ball" does.

This has naturally made me ponder about whether fantasy can be defined. If you look at all the different things that are called fantasy—and I mean just in the context of fantasy literature, not sexual fantasies etc.—you start to get all Wittgensteiny. In fact I might make students read part of Philosophical Investigations (as I did in my games course) just to let them know what they are letting themselves in for when they try to define things. Laurence Gagnon's definition, "any story might justifiably be called ‘a fantasy’ which gives us some explicit indication of the personality of one or more of the characters and which is also about a world that is conceivable but physically impossible," is appealing at first sight. However, there is the difficulty of saying exactly what is impossible; given what we know of physics, dragons are a far more likely possibility than faster-than-light travel. Moreover, as Gagnon admits, the term "fantasy" is here used "in a very general way such that some writings called ‘fairy-tales’, some labeled ‘science-fiction’, and, perhaps, some designated ‘dream-stories’ will fall under the concept of fantasy." In a course on fantasy fiction, I can't afford to be that general; I need something that will explain why The Lord of the Rings is definitely fantasy, The Day of the Triffids definitely isn't and Star Wars and Twilight are on the fuzzy borders with SF and horror respectively. I recently read Twilight described as "urban fantasy", which is silly considering that it takes place in a village, but does at least note that fangs do not a horror film make. Twilight could fairly be described low fantasy (i.e. a tale where fantastic elements are found in the normal world, as opposed to high fantasy, which has a world all of its own). But if that is true, then why do we not say the same of Dracula?

It could be that the distinction between fantasy and horror is of a different kind than the distinction between fantasy and science fiction. Horror is like comedy or pornography, in that it is a genre defined by the feelings it is designed to arouse, whereas fantasy, like westerns, is defined by the kind of things it describes. That is why such disparate creations as The Saw and The Omen can both be called horror films, and why when you reduce the scare quotient in a lot of so-called horror, you see that it is fantasy or SF (Of course there are people who are genuinely scared of the vampires in Twilight, but they're just wusses.) The categories of fantasy and horror overlap, not because of Wittgensteinian vagueness, but because they should. If you have an overlap between the sets of plants and animals, then you assume that the concepts "plant" and "animal" are a bit fuzzy, but there is nothing surprising about an overlap between the set of plants and the set of edible things.

Coming to the more notorious overlap between fantasy and science fiction, we therefore need to ask which kind of overlap it is: is it a plant/animal or a plant/edible overlap? Both the fantasy and science fiction genres are defined largely in terms of what they describe, and both involve describing things which we are fairly sure do not exist and have never existed. They are also the kind of things which not only do not exist but would surprise us if they were to exist. If a connoisseur of nineteenth-century fiction were to read in the Times Literary Supplement that Madame Bovary was actually a real person, he might put down his teacup and murmur "Well I never!" This is probably not how we would react if it were proved that Sauron was a real person.

Both fantasy and science fiction, then, deal with things that make us go "wow!" They are "astounding tales," and in this respect, the genres are also a little like horror, in that their definition includes the feelings they are designed to evoke. A novel set in a world which was exactly the same as ours with addition of toast that always falls with the buttered side up would fit Gagnon's definition of fantasy, but would not be fantastic; neither would it make for interesting science fiction. But is the "wow" of fantasy the same as the "wow" of science fiction? If that were the case, fantasy would be decidedly less impressive, as Ryan Somma argues in a fictitious dialogue between "fanboy" and "scientist": for every impressive fantasy creature, device or journey, science fiction has something bigger, stronger, faster or whatever. Shadowfax may carry Gandalf faster than any horse, but that's still well below the speed of light ... or even the speed of a family car. But this is not how it works: the "wow" of fantasy is subtly different from the "wow" of SF. As I said, dragons are a much more feasible proposition than faster than light travel, but dragons strike us as more magical and mysterious.

Let us imagine, then, a science fictional account of dragons (something Anne McCaffrey comes close to in the Pern books). Someone, somewhere, messes with the genes of birds to make them very big, featherless and scaly. (In other words, to make dinosaurs.) Then they work on the digestive system so that the creature produces methane which can then be ignited in its mouth. Voila, a dragon, which can then make the story interesting by escaping and laying waste to cities. We're talking something between Jurassic Park and Godzilla here.

This would make passable, if rather unoriginal science fiction, but despite the presence of dragons it definitely wouldn't be fantasy. The fact that the dragons' genesis is explained identifies it as SF, but this is not the most important point; it is a side-effect of an essential feature of science fiction, which is that it follows, or at least claims to follow, the rules of our universe. It may bend them, as with FTL travel or telepathy, but it cannot flout them. If a SF novel has spaceships travelling faster than light, it doesn't give a satisfactory explanation of how they do it; anyone who could provide one would already have a Nobel prize. They may have explanations of a kind ("tachyon drives", "wormholes" etc.) but this is just a way of saying "This is happening in our universe, according to the laws of that universe." They are most definitely not saying "Faster than light travel is physically impossible, but our hero can do it because he has a magic spaceship." That would be fantasy. What fantasy does is not to bend or even flout the rules; it says "The rules here are different." Not only are we not in Kansas any more, we aren't even in hyper-Kansas. This may be what makes the "wow" of fantasy different from the "wow" of SF. When Shadowfax gallops at the speed of a Citroen, we aren't saying "Wow, that's fast!" We're saying "Wow, a magic horse!"

If it is true that what makes fantasy is the idea of different rules, then that would explain why Star Wars sits so uncomfortably (but effectively) on the fence between fantasy and SF. It has all the trappings of space opera, but we are in no doubt that we are being told a fairy tale. When we see those words "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away ..." we don't think "Hang on, all galaxies are far away. I mean the nearest galaxy to us is Andromeda, and that's 2,500,000 light years away." What we think is "Once upon a time ..." and what we understand is "The rules are different here."

Comments

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

That is an excellent, clear, sensible explanation, and it also sorts out my long-standing problem regarding the genre of my NaNovel. It's not literary fiction that borders on fantasy. It's the other way round.

[eve-prime.livejournal.com]

When I think about the definition of fantasy, I guess I mostly fall back on LeGuin's "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie," but I don't entirely agree with her.

You know who probably could recommend the sort of article you're looking for? fjm, who is an academic specializing in fantasy lit. Here is her website of marginalia.

[eve-prime.livejournal.com]

(Alternatively, of course, you could expand your essay above, get it published, and assign it in your classes.)

[solri.livejournal.com]

The problem with giving students my own writing is that it makes them reluctant to criticise it. The only time I've put one of my own pieces in a course "book" was for the course I did on the Matrix films, where near the end I included the draft of "Guns, Lots of Guns" (which eventually made it into the first issue of chr0me_kitten's Molly: A popular Culture Zine), and there I was specifically asking how the draft could be improved.

[eve-prime.livejournal.com]

If you actually want them to debate what fantasy is (which seems worthwhile), your point is well taken. I think in a course where you merely wanted to inform them of your ideas, though, which I suppose could happen in a very introductory-level class, it might be worthwhile to have something like this to share.

[solri.livejournal.com]

The thing is that this is a general English and academic skills course taking its content from writing about fantasy, rather than a course on fantasy literature per se. We have this odd but effective system for freshman English courses whereby the teacher designs a course on a topic they're interested in, then students pick the course they are interested in. Well that's how it works in theory, anyway; in practice there are usually timetabling problems that mean you get a few students in each class without the slightest interest in the subject matter. One reason why I broadened the subject this year from "Tolkien" to "Fantasy" was that the Tolkien course was great for the Tolkien fans, but lost a lot of the other students. Whenever one of the Tolkienistas uttered the word "Silmarillion" you could hear the soft sigh of neurons closing down in the rest of the class. But even so, I'm going to have to give the same speech as I did last year, concluding: "If you think talking about elves is stupid, go and see your advisor and beg them to change your section."

[eve-prime.livejournal.com]

We all envy your students immensely, you know.

[solri.livejournal.com]

:-)

[solri.livejournal.com]

Interesting site. Actually, the introduction to Rhetorics of Fantasy is the kind of thing I'm looking at in terms of content, but I think the language would be beyond most of my students.

I may use "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" (I need to get hold of it and read it again before I decide) but I may be content with the parts that are quoted in a text I'm using "From Elfland to Hogwarts." (http://www.google.com.tr/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmuse.jhu.edu%2Fjournals%2Flion_and_the_unicorn%2Fv026%2F26.1pennington.pdf&ei=ay0XTNfSKcmiOKuNxKkL&usg=AFQjCNFbPracJAouVFoPow2Qr-Kr1NX37A&sig2=lYQCBjYoOHSoA7sZRaY2IQ)

[eve-prime.livejournal.com]

I've long wanted to read that article but had blithely assumed that my university didn't have access to the journal. You prompted me to think about it again, and I did try this time, and it does! Thanks!

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Damn good thinking. *friends*

Why do you have to begin by defining 'fantasy'? Who sez you have to define something -- ie give its precise boundaries -- before you can teach a course in it? The more courses we take, the less we can define such boundaries.

If you must, why not give some sort of rough set of examples and then ask the students to give examples from the literature of their own countries.

Popular movies might be the best sort of examples, as they're more accessible to non-English readers.

[solri.livejournal.com]

I always start courses by attempting to define the subject of the course for a number of reasons. First, it lets students know what they're in for. Often students sign up for a course with little or no idea of what is involved; my favourite example is a couple of students thinking the Homer in the title of my course "From Homer to Xena" (about warrior figures in legend and popular culture)was Homer Simpson! Secondly, it's a good way to get them thinking about the subject in general. Finally, as I mentioned, it lets them know how tricky definition is.

Your point about "the literature of their own countries" alerted me to the interesting fact that there is very little fantasy fiction (or SF) written in Turkish. Go into any large bookstore and you'll see several shelves of fantasy and SF, but it's nearly all translations of English-speaking writers.

[arya.livejournal.com]

It's been a couple years since I last took any lit classes, but IIRC the official distinction is that fantasy is any fiction which does not take place in the real world. So stuff like KJ Parker, which has zero magic or anything mystical, is still fantasy, because they're in made-up worlds; Star Wars and LOTR are all fantasy because Middle Earth and the Galaxy Far Far Away aren't Earth, and "Last Call" is simply fiction, despite its fantastic elements, because it's set firmly in the Real Las Vegas. Beyond that I believe low and high fantasy are officially designated by whether or not the setting features sentient non-human races. Thus, LOTR = High, because of elves and dwarves, while Song of Ice and Fire = Low, because it's all just humans..... (or is it?)

[solri.livejournal.com]

"Anything that doesn't happen in the real world" is far too broad; in fact arguably it includes all fiction, since the real world does not include, say, Madame Bovary or Raskolnikov. Even if I don't split hairs like that, it would still include SF set on any planet other than those already discovered.

I'm pretty sure the high -low distinction is to do with worlds, not races, so SoI&F is high fantasy, despite the absence of elves et al.

[arya.livejournal.com]

By "not in the real world" I mean, a world with a different geography than ours. You know, anything with a map inside the front cover. That's why I gave Parker and Tim Powers as the examples: there are zero fantastic elements in Parker's writing, but they are all in made-up world with made-up geography, hence American publishers classifying hir in fantasy; while Powers uses magic and mysticism, but it all takes place in such venues as Vegas, Mount Ararat, and the like, thus American publishers put him in non-fantasy fiction.

My lit profs had defined high/low by some not readily definable mixture of "the amount of magic in a fantasy setting" which she felt was best condensed into "are humans the only sentience, or not?" I have never heard *anyone* using *any* definition, place I&F as anything but low fantasy (not even George himself).

[solri.livejournal.com]

I'd still say the "map inside the front cover" marks high fantasy, rather than fantasy as a whole. Twilight, for example, is low fantasy because the geography is the same as our world, even though it's peopled with vampires and werewolves.

I&F is a tricky one - it's definitely on the periphery of fantasy because magic, other races etc. are conspicuous by their absence But to the extent that it is fantasy, it is high, not low.

[solri.livejournal.com]

I just came across a paper on high fantasy that uses I&F as one of its main examples. There again, I also recently read a paper on medievalism in RPGs that defines high fantasy as the adventures of high-level characters, so maybe we should just abandon the term as meaningless.

[jaipur.livejournal.com]

I think the suggestion of reading some Wittgenstein is an excellent one. :)

I'm no literary scholar, but it seems like the fairy tale aspects of Star Wars don't take it out of the SF genre. Maybe I missed it, but how are the rules "different" there (other than the famous misuse of "parsecs" as a unit of time)? It seems closer to your dragon example than to the Wizard of Oz.

In categorizing the books I read, though, I gave up and just distinguished between Fiction and Science Fiction+Fantasy, because I couldn't reliably draw the line between SF and Fantasy; I tried the magic vs science distinction but couldn't hold to it. Whereas Fiction (our world, mostly) and Fantasy (not our world, either due to magic or science or alternative history or whathaveyou) was pretty robust most of the time.

Though I read a good introduction to some 1950s sci-fi by Orson Welles where he referred to it as science fantasy, and I rather liked that.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Star Wars is the platypus of SF/FF. Like a lot of space opera, it's science fiction in the sense that it uses some of the vocabulary of science (or misuses it, as you note) but there's no actual science and a lot of what is magic in all but name. If I had to come down on one side or the other, I'd have to agree with you that it's closer to SF than FF, but "science fantasy" seems the best term.

[jaipur.livejournal.com]

oh right, I always forget about the Force. ;) I always remember Star Wars as lasers and spaceships and aliens, and forget the vaguely magical bits.

But I remember having this same argument about Vernor Vinge's book Fire Upon the Deep--pushing any technology to its limits looks like magic, and all that. The line between magic and science is not hard and fast, and thus the line between SF and F is not either.

[solri.livejournal.com]

I agree - and I'm particularly fond of writers who deliberately blur the boundary, like Vernor Vinge and Sheri Tepper.

[chris-cobb.livejournal.com]

Coming late to this discussion, but I'd add here that the gradual transformation of technology into tropes in SF makes the basis of its generic markers with respect to science inconsistent. What people thought future technology could look like in the 1930s or the 1950s, based on contemporary popular-but-educated understanding of the physical sciences, is quite a bit different from what that understanding suggests now. The imagined technology created within this understanding became the genre's conventions, however, so people who want to write stories that will be identified easily as SF must draw on those conventions. "Hard SF," which hews very close to speculative science, changes as science changes, but in other SF subgenres, advanced technology may be used as a convention or trope without any underlying scientific speculation about future technology being involved. To use your phrasing above, its "claim to follow the rules of our universe" is purely conventional. "Stars Wars," I think, uses SF tropes in just this way.

When I teach fantasy, I tend to discuss genre in terms of traditions rather than definitions. To provide some critical perspective, I use Le Guin's "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" mentioned above, though its focus on style may not provide a generic criterion that will be useful to non-native speakers. I also find the categories and definitions from Tolkien's "On Fairy Stories" useful to get students to think about what fantasy does. Students usually find his account of what we would call fantasy a bit too narrow but not wrong-headed, a combination that provokes good discussion, once they have unpacked what he actually means by secondary world, fantasy, recovery, escape, consolation, eucatastrophe, etc. I've never used Farah Mendlesohn's _Rhetorics of Fantasy in a class, but it has an introduction that defines subgenres of fantasy in terms of the ways they orient their readers to the fictive world of the narrative. Like "On Fairy Stories," it's probably not something to give as a whole to first-year students, but some excerpts plus a schematic summary might work, if you like the way she thinks about the issue.

Thanks for a very interesting discussion of this topic!

[solri.livejournal.com]

Good points - I especially like the idea of scientific speculation becoming generic trope, so, for example, the first people who wrote about spaceships were really interested in the possible mechanics of space travel, whereas now a spaceship is just something you associate with SF like you associate dragons with fantasy.

What I really like is when it is clear that the author has thought a lot about the underlying technology (or even magic) but plays their cards close to their chest. What would have made the Lord of the Rings bad (and the fantasy equivalent of hard SF) would be if, rather than the odd poem or tale, there had been copious references to the events in the Silmarillion, explaining the specific powers of the Valar, Morgoth's fall from grace, why Gandalf can work magic and so forth. Then it would have been, um, The Wheel of Time, I suppose.